Rising to Change ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
November 6, 2022
It seems that there is an election in a couple of days. I’m sure that you might have noticed. Quite some time ago, in a fit of anger over some of the actions, or inactions, of the current Texas governor, I sent some money to his opponent’s campaign. And ever since then I have been utterly bombarded by emails and texts from all sorts of people running for office.
And all of these people seem to know me personally!
“Janet, this is Catherine.” (Catherine, Catherine, oh – the senator from Nevada! Of course!)
And all of these messages are Urgent! Especially the ones from my new friend Chuck – that would be Senator Chuck Schumer. He texts every afternoon to say how urgent it is that I send more money. It seems as though there are constant Federal Election Commission deadlines that must be met. I don’t understand this – what happens if the deadlines aren’t met? No one ever says.
Then there’s my pal James Carville, the Democratic strategist. Of late, he’s taken to texting me in the evenings, saying, “I’m having trouble sleeping, Janet!” This is indeed worrisome. The man never looks well. I am wishing I could text back and say, “Sorry to hear this, Jim! (May I call you Jim?) I often have the same problem.”
And so on, and so on, day after day. “I’ll be brief, Janet.” “Thanks, Chuck.” They are brief, and to the point: send money, and send it now. There appears to only be one issue, one concern, and that is to raise enough money for TV advertising.
As the days go on (and on, and on) I am realizing what has been missing from all this frantic communication. There are two things missing. First, there is never any discussion of issues. I don’t know what Chuck, or Catherine, or John Fetterman, or anyone, really, are planning to do. But more concerning than that, is that I feel the lack of heart and soul in these appeals. “I’ll be brief, Janet!” This effort to elect people to govern my country is reduced to its barest bottom line: send money. Send more money. Send money now.
I have also noticed how hardened I have become over the last few years. I am more cynical. And I have less and less interest in the opinions of others who see the world very differently than I do. I remember back at the beginning of the Trump Administration there was a lot of conversation about how to engage, about the concern that people in rural areas were lashing out because they were feeling left behind, that there were fewer and fewer opportunities. I could understand that, and I worried about how to engage.
But I think, in the aftermath of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and this summer’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade, that my heart hardened. I found it hard to summon compassion for people who take political positions opposite to mine. I noticed one incident particularly after the Roe v. Wade decision. My sister sent the family a link to a screening of a film made over the course of several years about an ongoing dialog between women on opposite sides of the abortion debate. And I realized that I had absolutely no interest in hearing what the anti-abortion people had to say. None. That concerned me, and it should concern me, because it told me how my heart was hardening, and that I was becoming less compassionate, and less available.
So I turned to Parker Palmer’s book, Healing the Heart of Democracy. And I was concerned at my response to the beginning of the book, when he talks about the need for bridging both sides of a conflict. I checked the date of the book – 2011. “Sure,” I thought. “This has become dated.” I felt, once again, cynical and hard.
I put the book down for a time, but then I tried it again, and this time, I noticed that he was talking a lot about heartbreak. I felt something shift. Palmer’s thesis is that a lot of the rage we are seeing, and a lot of the inability to listen to one another, to feel compassion for one another, is stemming from heartbreak.
To be sure, these last few years have brought us loss upon loss, political and personal. I think of the loss of over one million people in the United States to Covid, so far. It is estimated that over 200,000 children have lost a parent or caregiver. I think of our losses – of connection, of companionship, as we isolated. I think of the loss of life due to gun violence. Think back to how you were feeling the day of the Uvalde shooting this past May. I think of the senseless deaths of people of color at the hands of police or of vigilantes – Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd. How can we even begin to process all this grief we hold?
And of course, I also think every day of the assault on the Capitol – not just an assault on a building, but an assault on one of our most enduring beliefs about ourselves as a country: that we carry out a peaceful and civil transfer of power. The January 6 uprising unraveled our belief in ourselves as a country where we live in freedom, where we are all equal, where we all believe in our system of government and the rule of law. We are losing a lot of our story, and that is heartbreaking.
And of course, here in this community in just the past six weeks we have lost Rufus, and Linda, and Lee, and Marge.
We don’t do a very good job at acknowledging our grief, especially when it has been so overwhelming and relentless. We swallow it, try to ignore it. But we tend to turn our grief into anger, and sometimes into violence. I wonder if the hardening I feel in my heart is an attempt to protect it from more grief.
And this inquiry led me to wonder about the people around the country who see things so completely differently than I do. I wonder about their grief. Parker Palmer would say that their vitriol, their hate speech, their violence, is also coming from a place of heartbreak, of loss. The difference between us is that since we look at the world so differently, we probably can’t articulate what each others’ losses look or feel like. But I feel a renewed motivation to at least wonder. So I tried to open my heart to their losses, but with only limited success. I discovered I can feel compassion for people whose jobs have been moved overseas. I cannot feel compassion, though, for people who are threatened by rights and privileges being asserted by people of color. And I reject conspiracy theories and threats of violence.
Parker Palmer writes openly about his own experiences with severe depression. In this book, Healing the Heart of Democracy, he shares his discovery that Abraham Lincoln also lived with depression, known then, of course, as melancholia. And because Lincoln lived with depression, Palmer wrote, he was able to accept the tension between light and darkness in human lives, and he could keep his heart open and hold that tension.
Palmer also talked about heartbreak in helpful ways. He noted that when a heart breaks, it can shatter like glass into a million shards. Or, it can break open. I remembered Leonard Cohen’s famous line: “There is a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in.”
Our work, then, is to try to soften our hearts, to not harden them, so that when they break – not if, but when – they break open instead of shattering. This is vitally important, and never easy. I wonder if the people responding angrily or violently to the rapid pace of change have had their hearts shattered.
When I thought that Parker Palmer’s book was too dated for me, I turned to another, brand new book called The Persuaders. Its author, Anand Giridharadas, also talked about heart, and what is at the heart of democracy. Hmmm, there’s that word again, I thought. The universe is trying to get my attention. Giridharadas introduces the reader to a number of people who are political activists, community organizers, and politicians – people who he calls change-makers. But first, he takes us deep inside the Internet Research Agency, the group of Russian trolls who for years now have been working to undermine American democracy and the very fabric of American society. The Russian trolls are working from far away, pretending to be Americans, sending tweets and Facebook posts that are designed to create unbridgeable gaps between us, to undermine trust; to reinforce beliefs that people on the other side are, as Giridharadas put it, “alien, menacing, and unchangeable.” (p. 10). The message is that there is no point trying to engage, because you will never be able to change ‘those peoples’’ minds. Don’t bother – you’re essentially at war.
To balance the upsetting story of the Russian troll farm, Giridharadas introduces us to the people willing to try to bridge the gaps; the people willing to persuade, to not write off other people. He offered a glimpse into a new kind of engagement around political issues, that he calls ‘deep canvassing’. In this work, people are trained to spend time with the folks who they approach, and to have a genuine, curious, and lengthy conversation. Now, of course, this does not always succeed. But the human connection, the respect and the willingness to approach with open minds and hearts does change minds and open hearts in return.
Giridharadas accompanied some of the canvassers in Arizona, and watched them work. He told the story of one visit, when they tried to talk to a woman about immigration. She told the canvassers that on a scale of 1-10 she would give the immigration issue a ‘1’. She did not support expanded rights for immigrants. The authors and the canvassers guessed that she was likely Native American, and unable to support giving rights to newer Americans that her people had been so long denied. They were unable to move her. But the story was compelling in that they met her face to face, and were able to understand what was probably motivating her. Unlike the Russian troll farms, or those fundraising texts bombarding me, all the people in this encounter wore human faces, and were able to respond to each other with their open hearts.
I found hope in these stories. The hope is in the willingness of people to encounter, to persuade, to connect, to create relationship. I see that as the change we need, the challenge we need to rise to meet, as we work to preserve our democratic way of life.
Parker Palmer said something else interesting. He wrote that being citizens isn’t something we are: being citizens is something we do. Of course, voting is a key piece of citizenship. Nothing is more important, and it is a right to be preserved and expanded before all else. But finding ways to change the narrative; to resist the attempts to drive a wedge between us, is also the work of citizens today. There are people trying to drive us apart. There are people trying to build bridges. Can we rise to change the balance, to change how we meet each other?
Anand Giridharadas ends his book with the story of George Goehl, the leader of a group called People’s Action. Goehl had become a drug addict, but made it from being a guest at a soup kitchen, to an employee, and then to a community organizer. George has the last word in the book: “The core of organizing is we want to create change in the world and change in structures and policies and rules,” he said. “But it is a craft that first and foremost is designed to help change people, and help people shake off any limiting beliefs, whether those are about ourselves or society, and replace them with something else…People change.”
I went back and looked at my sister’s message about the film of the journey of the women on different sides of the abortion debate. It sounded interesting. I think maybe I could sit through it now. I’ve remembered what I was starting to forget: If you can reach people’s hearts, and help them to stay open, people change. May we rise to change as well.
May it be so,
Amen.
